Developed by
DN Games
Released
May 25, 2010
Platform
Windows
Published by
DN Games

Genre
Adventure
Setting
Sci-Fi / Futuristic
Gameplay
Interactive Fiction / Text Adventure
Perspective
1st-person
Visual
Fixed / Flip-screen
Interface
Text Parser

Description

Inspired by the 2005 film (itself based on Douglas Adams' 1978 BBC sci-fi radio series), a team of indie developers independently re-implemented Infocom's 1984 Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy text adventure -- but now as a mouse-driven graphical adventure game.

As with the choice of narrator (planetary engineer Slartibartfast, whose name is not important, or the Great Green Arkleseizure), some elements are necessarily adjusted to accommodate the change in game interface technology, but the transition remains very faithful, retaining virtually every situation, puzzle, solution and description present in the original game, with the conspicuous alteration only of the brief spell spent inside the protagonist's brain and the inclusion of canonical humorous dialogue from the story's many forms which failed to turn up in the original game. An optional easy mode ("strag", denoting a non-hitch hiker) has been included removing many of the unfair and "walking dead" scenarios in the original game's notoriously sadistic design.

As in the original game, this game puts the player in control of earthman Arthur Dent, who awakens with a terrible hangover one morning to find that not only is his home slated for demolition, but his entire ("mostly harmless") planet is. With the player's help, he escapes to the nominally safer confines of a Vogon spaceship thanks to the efforts of his towel-proffering friend Ford Prefect, an undercover alien researcher (for the eponymous Guide) from a small planet in the general vicinity of Betelgeuse, and after overcoming the legendary Babel Fish puzzle and suffering through the third worst poetry in the Galaxy, the two of them end up ejected into space and are accidentally rescued (at infinite improbability) by Ford's remote relation Zaphod Beeblebrox, Galactic President, his current fling Tricia MacMillan (or Trillian), an astrophysicist and conspicuously the last human female alive following the Earth's destruction, and Marvin the Paranoid Android, a depressed supergenius.

Harnessing the powers of infinite improbability and a thing Arthur's aunt gave him that he doesn't know what it is, the player directs Arthur through episodes in the lives of his travel companions, all toward the end of successfully walking the legendary treasure planet of Magrathea, following the collection of several pieces of fluff, gathering an assortment of critical tools, demonstrating his intelligence to a robotic screen door, surviving an encounter with the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, thwarting an enraged invasion fleet, and perhaps most critically -- figuring out how to get a nice hot cup of tea following the destruction of the Earth. It may sound like a stiff order, but any player can overcome the adversity if they remember where their towel is and don't panic.

From Mobygames.com. Original Entry